Página PrincipalInternal dating: No dates given for any episode between late September (Clyde Bruckman) and early January (Syzygy). If the order of the episodes roughly tracks the order of the events in Mulder and Scully's lives, this should be set in December 1995.
Mulder is sitting in his car, staring at the stars, when Scully calls him, saying she's been trying to track him down all day. He tells her his apartment complex has been fumigated and he's come away to Massachusetts for the weekend, "just sitting and thinking" and investigating reports of lights in the sky. "Did you ever look up into the night sky and feel certain that, not only was there something up there but it was looking down at you at that same moment and was as curious about you as you were about it?" he asks. She gives him a long explanation of why intelligent extraterrestrial life is improbable. "What are you wearing?" he asks, saying he understands what she's saying but "I just need to keep looking." "Don't look too hard," she warns him. "You may not like what you find." Suddenly headlights appear. "Scully, I've got to go," he says, cutting off the call even as she calls his name.
The sheriff gets out of his car, suspicious, and asks Mulder if he's talking to his drug dealer. Mulder hands over his ID, asking if the sheriff knows anything about the lights in the sky. "FBI keep tabs on these things?" he asks. "No," Mulder says. The sheriff is then called on his radio. "Another roach attack," he says, driving off.
At the scene of Dr Bugger's death, Mulder calls Scully and asks her to come up, telling her roaches are mortally attacking people. "I'm not going to ask you if you just said what I think you just said since I know it's what you just said," Scully says. He tells her this is the third such death in the same day, but Scully suggests it could be anaphylactic shock caused by an allergic reaction to insect bites. "Still want me to come up?" she asks, and he says no. "Drug dealer," he mutters, when the sheriff asks him who he was talking to.
In an attic, two youths try to persuade a girl to try the "mind-expanding" experience of inhaling methane gas. Suddenly, one of the youths sees cockroaches crawling into his arm. In a panicked attempt to get rid of them, he hacks himself to death with a razor blade.
Scully is washing her dog (using "Die, Flea, Die" shampoo) when Mulder calls her, telling her about the latest death. Hearing about the home-made and foul smelling lab in the room, Scully suggests the youth was suffering from Eckbaum syndrome - a drug-related condition when people hallucinate about insects in the body and injure themselves removing them. "Still want me to come up?" she asks again, and he says no. After putting the phone down, Mulder finds a dead cockroach. It crumbles in his hand, drawing blood.
Mulder gets his hand treated by the medical examiner, who asks him if he should evacuate his family and if there's any danger. Mulder replies that he doesn't know, but the doctor doesn't believe him. "After talking with Agent Mulder here I suddenly feel slightly constipated," he tells the sheriff, who also expects Mulder to have all the answers.
The doctor sits on the toilet, oblivious to the fact that cockroaches are crawling everywhere.
Mulder tries to convince the sheriff that working for the federal government doesn't mean he knows all about cockroaches, and the sheriff tells him about the secret experiments set up by "an agent claiming to be from the Department of Agriculture" in the town. He thought it was to do with killer bees, but now thinks the government has created an army of killer cockroaches. Mulder urges him to keep quiet about this, to avoid a panic, but just then everyone starts screaming as the doctor is found dead. "He was covered with cockroaches," the orderly says, although there is only one there now, which disappears down the sink when Mulder tries to retrieve it.
"Who died now?" Scully asks, as soon as her phone rings. Sitting in front of the fire, reading "Breakfast at Tiffany's", she calmly tells Mulder to check the body for a bloodshot eye, suggesting the medical examiner died from straining too forcefully, causing a brain aneurysm. "I just hope you're not implying you've come across a new breed of killer cockroaches," she says, smiling.
Mulder breaks into the Dept of Agriculture site. Scully calls him, having researched on the Net and found about a new species of cockroach which is attracted to light, which could be responsible for the sightings. He tells her about the secret experiments, and she cautions him not to start trespassing again. "Too late. I'm already inside," he tells her. He then talks her through what he discovers, describing an ordinary sort of kitchen - ordinary, that is, except for the moving walls caused by large numbers of cockroaches behind the wall paper. "Aaagh!" he cries, prompting concerned enquiries from Scully. "Flash light went out," he explains, but then the lights go on and he stares in amazement at something we can't yet see. "Mulder!" Scully shouts again and again, as he cuts off the call.
The cause of Mulder's amazement is revealed to be Dr Bambi Berenbaum, clearly knocking him out with her skimpy shorts and sultry stance. "What's a woman like you doing in a place like this?" he asks, as we see Scully staring sadly at the phone.
Bambi talks enthusiastically about cockroaches, though she says she's never heard of any cases in which they attack people, although sometimes they crawl into people's ears and noses. She explains her theory that UFOs are actually insect swarms, showing him her experiment that shows that insects glow when they fly into an electrical field. "I don't know if you know anything about UFOs," she says, and Mulder doesn't enlighten her. "Fascinating," he says, when she finishes, looking for all the world like some dumb bimbo. When his phone rings, he says "not now," and hangs up, turning again to Bambi and telling him how fascinating he's always found insects.
In the motel, a man lies on his bed as the television news urges people not to panic (this while men in contamination suits and a medical team with a gurney are seen in the background.) Cockroaches clamber all over his bed.
In the same motel, Mulder anxiously checks the bed for cockroaches, clearly imagining he can feel them climbing on his body and up his nose. He calls Scully, who's lying in bed clutching the phone. "I can't sleep," he says, telling her about having met an entomologist. Scully asks what "he" said, but Mulder lets slip the word "she". "She?" she says, somewhat warily, then, when Mulder mentions her name, asks incredulously "her name is Bambi?" "Both her parents were naturalists," Mulder says, off-hand, before telling her about the insect UFO theory. "Her name is Bambi?" she repeats, in reply. "Scully, can I confess something to you?" he asks. "Yeah, sure, okay," she says, looking as if she has no desire to hear what he has to say, which she presumably expects will relate to Bambi. Despite the fascination with insects that he told Bambi he felt, he tells Scully he hates insects, having been confronted with a praying mantis when he was a boy. "I had a preying mantis epiphany," he says, saying he screamed ("not a girlie scream") at the thought that such a thing could exist. "The mysteries of the natural world were revealed to me that day, and instead of being astounded I was repulsed." "Are you sure it wasn't a girlie scream?" she asks, but Mulder hears a scream elsewhere in the motel and puts the phone down. She throws the phone down and rolls her eyes.
Dr Eckerle, who's taken refuge in the motel after the death in his house, is among several men who discover the body of the man seen a few scenes earlier. Mulder rushes in, finding the man dead on his bed, covered with cockroaches. He calls Scully, who's packing her bags, saying she's definitely coming up there now. This time, however, Mulder's the one who suggests an ordinary explanation - that the man died of a heart attack induced by fear. All the other deaths have now been explained, he tells her, and were caused in each case by the reasons she had suggested. He then sees a cockroach under a table and, crouching to pick it up, cuts off the call.
Mulder and Bambi, their faces touching, study the insect Mulder found. Bambi discovers it is in fact a machine, not an insect, and tells him about a scientist who deigns robots in the shape of insects.
Mulder visits the scientist, Dr Ivanov, who's confined to a wheelchair. As Mulder dodges around the room, chases by an attentive robot which Ivanov explains has taken a fancy to him, Ivanov tells him that NASA have commissioned him to design robots for space travel. He also believes that anything sent to earth by extraterrestrial life forms would also be in the form on robots, not living beings. Anyone who thinks otherwise "has been brain-washed by too much science fiction," he says. Mulder shows him the insect legs and Ivanov is staggered, speechless with amazement. "It's beyond my comprehension," he says, at last.
Scully arrives in town to find a store being raided by panicking crowds. Everyone is full of certainties - that cockroaches are eating people whole, that they are spreading the Ebola virus, although no-one admits to actually having seen any roaches. Scully displays her ID, assuring everyone that everything will be okay, but then two women, struggling for the last bottle of "Die, Bug, Die?" knock over a pile of chocolate nibbles ("Choco Droppings"). "Roaches!" someone cries, and everyone runs away.
Ivanov, still in shock, drinks his way through a bottle of whisky. Mulder, who's had a glass himself, leaves, coming across a cockroach in the hall. "Greetings from Planet Earth," he says.
Bambi examines the cockroach and pronounces it normal. "Even the...." Mulder asks, stopping awkwardly. "Even the genitalia," she tells him. Scully calls, telling him about the panic. She also tells him Dr Eckerle was researching methane fuel derived from manure. He had an import licence from the place where the breed of exciting new cockroaches she'd found about on the web come from. Mulder suggests the cockroaches are probes sent by aliens, and they refuel themselves by extracting methane gas from manure. "I think you've been in this town too long," Scully says, after a long silence.
Mulder and Bambi go to Dr Eckerle's fuel firm (Motto: "Waste is a terrible thing to waste"). Bambi waits in the car and Mulder goes in alone. Eckerle shoots at him, panicking, saying the insects are out to get him. Mulder warns him that the methane may explode if he fires his gun.
Scully drives up. "Let me guess - Bambi," she says. Bambi, calling Mulder "Fox", tells her what's happened, and Scully gets her gun out and prepares to go in. "This is no place for an entomologist," she tells Bambi, when she offers to help.
Eckerle, crazed with fear, holds Mulder at gunpoint, as Mulder urges him not to kill the roaches, so they will be able to leant more about them. "How do I know you're not a cockroach?" Eckerle asks him. Mulder assures him he's not, but then his cell phone rings. "You are one of them!" Eckerle shouts, shooting at him. Mulder runs, meeting Scully on the way. Just as they get outside, the whole place explodes, showering them with manure. "Crap," Mulder mutters.
Next morning, the sheriff recounts the death toll of the panic, but also that there have been no cockroach sightings for a while. Ivanov comes up, wanting to see the mechanical cockroach parts, but Mulder tells him they were reduced to powder in the explosion, and that were made of common metals. Bambi thinks the insects, whatever they were, may have moulted and flown away. "Yeah, that would explain everything," Scully mutters. She and Ivanov then discover a mutual interest in the "Planet of the Apes", and go off together, talking enthusiastically about his work. "Smart is sexy," Scully mutters, telling Mulder that he needn't worry. Next time there's an invasion of dung-eating insect probes from outer space Bambi and Ivanov's uber-children will have figured out how to save the planet. "I never thought I'd say this to you, Scully, but you smell bad," Mulder tells her.
Mulder writes his report, reflecting on the development of our thought processes and whether the next step will be by beings we have created ourselves. He wonders how such visitors from another planet would react to being confronted with such primitive creatures as humans, and how we would react to such an alien lifeform. Reaching for some cake, he sees an odd insect, white from just having moulted. He stares at it thoughtfully for while, then slams an X-File on it.
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